


Where the Light Is

by ivyspinners



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Relationships, Ficlet, Gen, Padmé Amidala Lives, Shmi Skywalker Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22293715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: She makes hand-woven cloth in the towns by Theed's rivers, and for once it's with joy at the choosing of it, if a little bittersweet.Shmi Skywalker makes it off Tatooine. The waves ripple through the universe, except where it doesn't.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	Where the Light Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mollivanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/gifts).



> Mollivanders gave me the canon AU prompt of Shmi being freed from slavery when Anakin was.

i.

Shmi settles on Naboo, where the air is the perfect temperature and too cool at the same time, where the light is gentle and perfect and just too dim. She makes hand-woven cloth in the towns by Theed's rivers, and for once it's with joy at the choosing of it, if a little bittersweet. In most universes, her steadying presence is too much for Darth Sidious, and she doesn't survive Anakin's adolescence, but in this one we imagine a universe where she did.

ii.

Anakin leaves with Jedi Kenobi, tears on his face. His mother is free, and her credits are _hers_ , and her body is hers, but leaving still hurts. But in this universe, he has a place to return to, and one year after taking off from Naboo, he returns with the newly chosen senator's ship. There's a place for him to go, to be a person, and he begrudges the Jedi the same way he begrudged his old masters. The temple isn't for him. Instead, he grows up in Theed, alternately winning over and bullying children his age, afternoons with Padmé, training with her guard, and summers spent in the Vice Chancellor's holiday home.

"I just want you to be able to protect those precious to you," Sidious tells him. "Your mother. The queen."

Anakin learns.

And then he spends his days with those who are his friends first, yelling and shouting and letting his anger out (not always to good effect either), but who stay his friends after fighting.

iii.

The Jedi Order continues, as it has for thousands of years. Obi-Wan Kenobi trains one very successful Jedi, and one high-spirited Togruta. Funnily enough, it's the same reason Ahsoka was assigned to Anakin, in another universe.

iv.

Some things stay the same. Many things stay the same. Anakin falls in love with the queen, and stays in love after she becomes the senator, but she's still just Padmé to him. To Padmé, he is one who knew her first as herself, queen second. Clones train on the other side of the galaxy. Obi-Wan goes to Dantooine, and in this universe, Palpatine is every bit as set on becoming emperor, so the clone wars begin again.

The force swirls around Anakin in different ways. In this universe, he has not yet needed to make choice after choice about life and death, and so he thinks he knows himself.

Because Anakin and Padmé are married, there is no need for secrecy. She gets medical attention for her pregnancy, gets family attention from her parents and Shmi, and the progress goes smoothly. Palpatine learns of this development with no small amount of glee--there are so many ways to control Anakin now, so many people who might be the catalyst for his fall, so many people to threaten afterwards.

v.

Some things stay the same. When Anakin falls slowly to the dark side, this time, it is on Naboo, and there is no guilt. He would never feel guilty about killing those who tried, and nearly succeeded, in blowing up Padmé's shuttle--with Palpatine and his mother on board. The power at his fingertips has been his for half his life, and why would he question familiarity?

(It was the Jedi, Palpatine says. And treason.)

vi.

Some things are different. Padmé gives birth in Theed's best hospital, and does not draw her last. She remembers Anakin's eyes, deep yellow as he killed those five men without a second thought. In this universe, she has met dark side users too. Shmi sits by her side, as much on guard as resting, and they talk into the night

Padmé joins the resistance, when she learns the capital has fallen. She leads Darth Vader on a merry chase around the galaxy, her children nowhere in sight.

Shmi goes where she knows Anakin would never find her. She takes Luke and Leia to the place she hates, and Anakin despises. Some things stay the same: she falls in love. The twins are raised by the name Skywalker, but for her, not her son.

Three years into their stay, Luke and Leia growing stronger every day, two Jedi show up on their doorstep.

"Are you here to take them?" Shmi asks. She doesn't show her teeth, though she wants to. But she wonders, all the same, if Anakin might have been different if they hadn't been so selfish.

"No," Ben Kenobi says. "They are Padmé's children."

"We're here to protect them," Ahsoka says. "And teach, if they want to learn."


End file.
